My slab of Charoite (also known as Charolite) is from Siberia, and I have a funny feeling it didn't come to me quite by entirely legal means. I bought it from a well-established dealer in the US, but I read somewhere that it wasn't permitted to export raw slabs from Siberia, only tumbled stones. I tell myself that I couldn't have read such a thing, so perhaps it's just that it's only quite tricky to get an export permit.

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